


Swamp Water Baptism

by diablo77



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, And Georgia because why the hell not, Autistic Castiel, F/M, Goth Meg, Meg and Ruby are sisters, Megstiel - Freeform, Post-High School, Teen Mom Ruby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:42:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6338920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diablo77/pseuds/diablo77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm autistic and have headcanoned Cas as basically autistic for years, so I got really excited when I found out Autistic!Cas fics were already a thing, but I couldn't find any Megstiel ones so I had to write my own. My autistic Cas is basically Steve!Cas except he was never an angel in the first place. This is my first AU fic so let's see how it goes!</p><p>Cas has a safe, predictable, manageable life working in a convenience store and living in his own little apartment. Then he meets a girl who is anything but safe or predictable, and his whole world changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

                Castiel leaned over the countertop and propped his chin in his hand. He noticed that all of the chocolate cherries in the bin by the register had been flattened, little burst bubbles, what looked like thumb prints in their foil-wrapped centers. Someone must have come along and poked them when he was in the back at some point. A kid, probably, or a drunk. He pondered whether to replace the whole bin and throw them out, or whether Nora would be angry with him for wasting them. He preferred to avoid conflict. Of course, if she saw the whole ruined bin while it was still his watch and knew he _hadn’t_ done anything about it…

            As if on cue, Cas’s manager swooped through and shoved a rag into his hand. “If you got time to lean, you got time to clean,” she chanted, waiting for him to stand up and wipe the rag over the already-clean countertop before retreating back into her office. Glancing out the glass front doors, he noticed more trash blowing across the parking lot than usual. Good time to go and sweep it up. That would keep him busy, at least. He retrieved his broom and long-handled dustpan from the hooks by the kitchen door and headed outside.

            A wash of cigarette smoke hit him in the face as soon as he stepped outside. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell to him, exactly, but he knew Nora would feel differently. He turned toward the smell and that’s when he saw the girl. Tiny and fierce-looking, in a black leather jacket and combat boots, she sat on top of the trash can next to the door, swinging her dangling legs and kicking the can. Cas recognized her. She’d gone to his school, probably a few years younger than him though she’d graduated only the year after he had. He was almost twenty when he finished, older than the mainstream kids, but he’d earned a real diploma, not just a certificate of completion like some of the other special ed kids who just stuck around until they were too old to be in high school anymore. He knew he was smart, but they’d kept keeping him back because he was behind in social skills. His mother had told him it was okay, some people just took a little longer. Anyway, this girl – what was her name? Maggie or something? – had been one of the rough kids, the ones who dressed in black and snuck off campus to smoke, and Cas had been intimidated by them, so they’d never spoken. He felt a familiar tightness in his throat as he addressed her now, even though technically he was the one with the authority in this situation.

            “You can’t smoke here,” he said. “You’re within one hundred feet of the entrance. You have to stand at a greater distance from the door.”

            The girl smirked at him, her dark curls falling across her full heart-shaped face. “Oh really?” she said.

            “I didn’t instate the policy,” Cas said. “It wouldn’t bother me, but – ”

            Her dark eyes flashed with something that made Cas uncomfortable, and he looked away. Her mouth, though, twisted up like she was going to laugh. “I get it,” she said. She grabbed the pack of menthols that had been sitting next to her and shoved it inside her shirt. Rising without being careful to smooth down her skirt, she headed across the parking lot. Cas caught a quick glimpse of shiny purple panties before the fabric righted itself, and his face felt hot. Maybe-Maggie walked straight to Cas’s old gold Lincoln and hoisted herself up onto the front bumper, climbing up to sit on the hood. She retrieved her cigarette pack and lit another. Cas followed, sweeping the blown bits of paper around the car into his dustpan and wondering to himself what he’d do if she was still there when he got off. By his watch, it would probably be time to go by the time he finished sweeping the parking lot.

            “What time do you get off?” Maybe-Maggie asked him. Cas startled backward. He was really starting to wonder if the people around him could hear his thoughts.

            “By my watch, it will probably be time to go by the time I finish sweeping the parking lot,” he said.

            She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and laughed, a real laugh this time. “Okay then,” she said, watching him as she took a drag off her cigarette. She crossed one leg over the other, and as the short black fabric of her skirt flipped up and resettled, Cas caught another flash of purple. He looked down. The crushed paper cups and candy-bar wrappers blowing around the asphalt suddenly seemed fascinating to him, and he focused intently on them as he swept them into his dustpan, looking anywhere but at the girl, though he swore he could still feel her eyes on him. Finally he was finished, and with a glance around the now bare and empty lot, he sighed and walked back into the store.

            “Finished?” Nora asked him with something like amusement in her voice when Cas came back in to hang up the broom and dustpan. He’d never been great at reading people’s emotions, but something about his boss always seemed like she were either angry, or laughing at everything. Maybe both at once.

            He’d gotten the job at the Gas-N-Sip six months earlier, his first job despite being two years out of high school. He’d applied for jobs before, but he’d never gotten one, despite doing his best to follow his pre-vocational teachers’ advice about keeping his hands still and forcing himself to make eye contact. It always seemed like there was a script he was supposed to follow, one he’d never gotten a copy of. When the interviewers would ask him if he had questions, he’d honestly answer _no,_ or ask things he thought were important, like whether there was a rule about having to wear a wristwatch like at that place he’d job-shadowed in school, because he couldn’t tolerate the feeling of anything around his wrists. The interviewers would always look at him strangely, and never call him back.

Nora, though, had seemed desperate. Someone had just quit that morning, she said, chain-smoking through the interview on the back patio table, and they’d had to fire someone else for stealing meat out of the cooler. Of all the things to steal, Cas couldn’t understand why _meat_ , and he said so. When Nora asked him why he wanted to work at the Gas-N-Sip, he told her simply that he needed a job. She’d laughed, called him refreshing, and told him he could start that day if he wanted. Later it occurred to him that maybe she only liked his honesty so much because it made her optimistic that he wouldn’t steal meat. But at least he had a job now.

“See you tomorrow, Cas,” Nora said, and Cas punched himself out on the time clock and left, digging in the pockets of his blue work vest for his keys. He didn’t raise his head until he got to his car, but when he did, he saw the girl still perched on his hood.

“Couldn’t get enough of my company?” she asked, smirking again, a dimple sinking into her cheek.

“This is my car.”

“It is?” she hopped down but didn’t move away, instead pressing her body closer to Cas’s and trailing a finger down his arm. “You’re giving me a ride home, then.”

Cas wasn’t accustomed to being informed of things like that, without even being provided an option. It made him a little nervous, his stomach twisting behind his vest in a way that he imagined she could see. He rocked a little on the balls of his feet, trying to calm himself. He felt the urge to flap his hands too, but he shoved them deep in his vest pockets to keep them still. Despite the disturbing disruption to his routine, there was something about this girl he liked. He wanted to see what would happen if he let her into his car, if he let her tell him where to go. Maybe she’d take him there with her.

As he was thinking it, she was letting herself in, squeezing past his body to wedge herself through the unlocked door and slide across the driver’s seat to position herself next to the passenger window. Breathing deeply, Cas climbed in beside her.

As he started the engine, she leaned over him and started fiddling with the radio. She wrinkled her nose as she flipped through the stations, nothing seeming to please her. Meanwhile Cas worried that the warmth of her body bending over his lap was making him too excited. He scooted as far towards the door as possible, but her hair was brushing his thighs and she seemed oblivious to the effect it was having on him.

“All these stations suck,” she announced. She pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and adjusted it until music poured through the speakers, tinny but loud. Thrashing guitars and girls’ voices, voices that might have been pretty except they were almost screaming.

_You’re no rock ‘n’ roll fun_

_Like a party that’s over before it’s begun…_

            Cas thought to wonder if the song had been chosen on purpose, if she was pointing those lyrics at him, but she didn’t seem to have any such intent in mind. She cranked down her window and tossed her head into the empty space, letting the wind blow her hair around her face. Cas kept his eyes on the road as he always did, both hands firmly at ten o’clock and two o’clock on the wheel like he’d been shown, but every time he stopped for a red light or a stop sign he couldn’t resist stealing glances at her. “I don’t know where I’m taking you,” he said finally.

            She pulled her head in from the window and stared at him. “Guffin Road,” she said. He knew where that was; on the outskirts of town, where rough people lived in shacks and trailers and didn’t react kindly if strangers drove through. As if she’d read this thoughts – again – Maybe-Maggie touched his leg in a way he supposed was meant to be reassuring. “It’s cool,” she said. “You’re with me.”

            The idea that he was – with her – even if only for as long as it took to drive her where she was going, filled him with a feeling he couldn’t name but didn’t find entirely unpleasant. He steered the car away from downtown and let her blast her music he’d never heard, her body sprawling over his seats like she was claiming them, claiming _him._

At her direction, he pulled into a driveway in front of a singlewide trailer with a complicated jumble of plywood add-ons tacked to it, shooting off in every direction. A girl with long dark hair like Maybe-Maggie’s, a tank top and a scowl, swung open the door and stomped down rickety-looking steps made from the same kind of plywood. “Dammit, Meg, where’ve you been?” she demanded.

            Oh. _Meg._

“Out. Shit, Ruby, you’re not my mom.”

            “Nice. Real nice. Who’s he?” the girl called Ruby jerked a thumb toward Cas.

            “He’s – ” Meg turned and stared at Cas, and he realized suddenly that she probably didn’t know his name.

            “Castiel,” he said, his voice cracking slightly.

            “Well, Castiel, you shouldn’t mess around with my sister. She’s a skank and a half.” She laughed as Meg punched her in the arm. He couldn’t tell if either of them were joking or not, and it made him nervous.

            “You wanna stay for a bit? My brother can get us beer. We might have a kind of party.” Meg leaned through the frame of Cas’s still-open passenger window.

He thought about it, about putting his car in park and walking into that trailer, into whatever he would find there. A place where kids like Meg and Ruby drank beer and punched each other for fun. He wasn’t a kid, he reminded himself; he was twenty-two and could buy beer himself if he wanted to. He’d just never wanted to. And he’d never been the kind of person who could do what he was thinking about doing, what people like them did all the time. He didn’t know how to be. Shifting into reverse, he shook his his head. “I can’t.”

As he drove back down the mountainous road and into town, he couldn’t get the song she’d been playing out of his head. He wished he’d thought to ask her what it was. He pulled up to the curb near his apartment building, a scummy place but cheap and close to the Gas-N-Sip, and he’d never really thought much about it before tonight. He climbed the stairs and let himself in, scratched his cat on the head as she rubbed against his ankles. This was what he knew. This was safe, predictable, controllable. All the things he needed. But as he closed his blinds and locked his deadbolt, moving for his bed, he still couldn’t get Meg’s song out of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song lyric from "You're No Rock 'N' Roll Fun" by Sleater-Kinney.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day at work, Cas had almost put the previous day out of his head. The routine was like it always was, he had his tasks to do, and Nora wasn’t around so he didn’t have to worry about being caught in the occasional daydream. He was in the cold storage area behind the drink cases, re-stocking soda bottles and moving the milk jugs with the earlier expiration dates to the front when he heard a voice calling from the front of the store. “Hey, is there anybody here? Hey, Clarence, you here?”

            Cas stuck his head through the space in the freezer case. Meg was standing by the soda fountain with a half-full cup, looking annoyed. He opened the glass door leading back into the store and stepped out. “My name’s not Clarence,” he said. “It’s Castiel.”

            “Sorry,” she said, her look of irritation dissolving into that smile that made him want to look away, like he was staring into a light too bright for his eyes. “I was close though, right?”

            “I guess,” Cas stammered, though he didn’t really think it was that close at all. Then again, he hadn’t been sure about _her_ name until he’d heard her sister say it…

            “Anyway, you’re out of root beer,” she said, pointing to the machine. She poked the root beer tab with her finger to demonstrate. Cas started to say that touching the tabs with one’s fingers was unsanitary, and ask her to please not do it, but somehow the words caught halfway in his throat and he couldn’t seem to speak at all. Clear bubbly water flowed from the root beer tap and sloshed into the overflow tray. Cas looked down to see that Meg’s cup was only half-full of liquid in a color he was certain none of the soda varieties they sold came in.

            He found his voice. “I’ll go change the mix syrup.” As he walked into the back room, he could swear that, leaning against the counter behind him, she was laughing. But somehow it didn’t seem like the way he was used to being laughed at, by all the town kids who thought it was so funny the way he just didn’t understand things. Meg was laughing in a way that seemed appreciative, as if he’d earned it. Somehow this confused him more, since he didn’t understand what he could have done to earn it.

            In the back, Cas pulled a box of root beer mix syrup from the stack they kept there and yanked off the cardboard tab covering the spout. He hoisted the heavy box onto his shoulder and felt the momentary twinge of satisfaction he always did when he performed this task – it was hard work, and for as scrawny as he knew he looked, he was strong. He lifted the box onto the root beer shelf, pulling down the empty one with his free hand and tossing it onto a pile of boxes to be crushed at the end of the shift. He hooked the spout of the box onto the soda-water nozzle and watched as the thick dark-brown liquid flowed into the tube.

            Walking back out into the store, he said “It should be adequately mixed now.”

            Meg stuck her cup under the tap and let a quick squirt of root beer tumble into the cup, then another. Then she moved the cup over to the orange-soda tab next to it and did the same. She ran her cup under all of the taps, over and over, adding only small amounts of cola, fruit punch, and lemonade each time.

            Cas stared at her. “What are you doing?”

            “What, you never had swamp water before?”

            “What… _swamp_ water?”

            She laughed. “They just call it that. It’s when you mix all the flavors together. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I thought everybody did.”

            “There are a lot things…everyone does, that I don’t do,” Cas said. From Meg’s reaction he wondered if what he’d said was rude. That happened sometimes, that people thought things he said were rude when he was just telling the truth. “I’m sorry if that was rude,” he said. “Sometimes people think things I say are rude when I’m just telling the truth.”

            Meg stared at him for a moment, then burst into laughter. “It wasn’t,” she said. “I promise.” Cas had that same feeling he’d had before, that she wasn’t quite laughing _at_ him. It almost seemed as though she were inviting him to join in, but Cas rarely laughed. It didn’t come naturally to him, and forcing it was uncomfortable. He managed a slight smile instead and shifted his body behind the counter so he could ring her up. By that point, though, two big guys he recognized from school had gone through the soda line behind her, mixing their own strange concoctions, and pushed their way past Meg to the front of the register line.

            Cas gestured toward Meg, starting to say something about how she’d been first, but she pressed her lips together and shook her head. The guys were jocks, wrestlers or football players or something back when they were in school. Cas had never paid much attention to what exactly guys like that _did_ ; he was too busy staying out of their way. He held his breath while he rang them up, but was relieved that they didn’t say much of anything to him outright. They just stood at the counter and jostled each other, smirking in a way that seemed to Cas precisely the opposite of Meg’s laughter – they seemed like they were laughing at him even though they weren’t technically laughing at all.

            After they left, and drove off in the taller boy’s car, Meg sidled up to the counter and leaned on it as she plunked her cup down. “Get me a pack of Newports, too,” she said.

            “Can I see your I.D.?’

            She gave him an odd look. “Are you serious? We went to school together, you dork. You know how old I am.” Despite the insult, Cas still couldn’t detect any overt meanness in her, which increasingly confused him.

            “Nora makes me check,” he said. “I could get in trouble if I don’t.” This was true, though from the way Meg glanced around the otherwise empty store he guessed she could tell that Nora wasn’t there to see. Nonetheless, she reached into her purse and handed him her driver’s license. Scanning quickly to keep her from getting suspicious, he noted that her full name was Margaret Masters and she was nineteen years old. He didn’t bother looking at her height or weight because he didn’t care about those things, but he noticed that, even though the card had been issued less than a year earlier, the address listed on it wasn’t the one where he’d dropped her off the day before. “This seems legitimate,” he said, and handed it back to her before retrieving the pack of cigarettes and ringing it up along with the soda.

            “Hey,” she said, glancing sideways at him as she banged the pack on the countertop before tucking it away. “Wanna come out and have one of these with me?”

            Cas looked around. “I’m the only one to man the store.”

            “So? You’ll be right outside the door. You can see if someone comes in.”

            He started to remind her that he wasn’t allowed to smoke right outside the door, and in fact neither was she, but he realized that no one was there to catch them. Someone else, someone like her, would do it anyway. And there was something about her that just made him want to be near her.

            He followed her out the door. She wasn’t wearing a skirt that day; she had on a halter top and very tight black jeans, but when she moved he could glimpse a half-moon of skin between the hem of her top and the waistband of her jeans, and in flashes between, another hint of purple panties, though these ones were lacy instead of silky. He felt guilty for looking, but she didn’t seem to care who could see.

            Outside the store, she clambered up onto the same trash can he’d kicked her off of the day before and tapped a cigarette out of the pack. She stuck it into the corner of her mouth and held it there, unlit, as she tapped out another and extended it to him. “Y’know, I’m kind of surprised you smoke,” she said as he took it. “I figured you’d turn me down. You don’t seem like the type.”

            “What type do I seem like?” He stared into her face until she blushed and looked away.

            “Aw, I didn’t mean it like that.” Now Cas was really confused. Was Meg actually… _flustered_?

            “I started when I started working here,” Cas confessed. “I figured out it was the only way I ever got to take a break.”

            Meg nodded as if this made perfect sense to her. Cas was surprised. He wasn’t used to making sense to people. She pulled out a lighter and lit her cigarette, then handed it to him. He flicked the wheel and was relieved that it lit smoothly for him this time; he was still getting the hang of the mechanics of it all, and often as not he’d have to fumble for a few minutes before he managed to spark a flame. He wanted her to think he knew what he was doing.

            As he took his first puff, his mind wandered back to Meg’s I.D. and what she’d said about going to school together. It seemed dishonest somehow, to let her think he was her age. “We’re not the same age, you know,” he blurted out.

            She gave him that same look she had when he’d asked for the I.D., eyes flicking over his body while she smiled, as if everything about him amused her in some way. “I know,” she said. “You were a year ahead of me. You graduated the same year Ruby did.”

            Cas looked down. “No, I mean…I’m not the same age as Ruby either. I’m not mainstream.”

            “I’m not very mainstream either.”

            “I mean I was in special ed.”

            “You?” Meg lowered her cigarette even though she hadn’t fully finished lifting it to her lips. The smoke trailed from between her fingers, momentarily forgotten. “But you’re like the smartest person I know. I saw you in that spelling bee sophomore year. You won for the whole district. And you didn’t even act like it was hard.”

            “It wasn’t. I have an excellent grasp of vocabulary.”

            “So why were you in SPED then?”

            “I have autism spectrum disorder and moderate dyspraxia,” Cas quoted the paperwork from the file that had followed him through school. He knew what the words meant, in clinical terms. In terms of his own life, they were why he never understood when people were being sarcastic or making jokes. Why people told him he talked funny and didn’t understand personal space. Why he still sometimes walked away in the middle of conversations because he was too preoccupied with whatever was on his mind to remember to end them. Why he took two extra years to graduate, and why he’d only just learned to drive a year ago.

            “Autism? Like Rain Man?” Meg said.

            Cas shook his head. “I don’t understand that reference,” he said.

            “It was a movie.”

            “Oh. I don’t know. Maybe.” Cas shrugged. “I’m like me.”

            “Well, I like you,” Meg said.

            Cas started to respond, but before he had the chance he heard a screeching of tires and saw a flash of red metal, too fast to process what was happening as the taller of the two sports guys leaned from the driver’s side window and yelled, “Hey Demon Girl, what you doing with Short Bus over there?”

            “Fuck you, Dick!” Meg screamed back, but in a flash something came flying from the car. Cas didn’t recognize it as the same cup he’d sold them a few minutes earlier until the plastic lid separated from the Styrofoam and the contents sloshed over Meg’s body, soaking her from head to toe. She grabbed the empty cup and hurled it back, screaming curses at them, but their tires were already squealing out of the lot, leaving streaks of black rubber on the hot pavement. “Dammit,” she muttered, shaking sticky brown liquid out of her hair. “I have to work in an hour, too.”

            Cas glanced back at the door. There was still no one inside. He remembered Nora’s instructions about emergency closures, if he was alone and had to run out to re-stock something. “I could close up for a short time,” he said. “I could take you home so you can get cleaned up.”

            Meg shook her head. “Thanks, but I don’t have time. Fuck. They’re probably gonna fire me, too. If I walk in like this… I’ve got enough strikes against me.”

            “Where do you work?”

            “At the laundromat on Fourth and Cedar. It’s not a bad gig. All I do is sell soap and make change, unless something gets stuck in a machine.”

            Cas thought for a moment. “Well,” he said hesitantly, “I could take you to my place. I live right around the corner. I probably have something clean you could wear.”

            She looked at him for a minute, as if sizing him up. “Okay,” she said finally. He turned the hands on the plastic clock in the door thirty minutes ahead, placed it back under the sign that said WILL RETURN AT and locked the door. Still dripping and cursing, Meg trudged beside him to his car.

            Inside Cas’s apartment, Meg immediately pulled her heavy boots off. As she did, the cat brushed her ankles and she reached down to rub her. “Oh, hi there, cat.” Cas stepped into the kitchen area, separated from the rest of his studio only by the fact the the floor was linoleum tile instead of worn carpet, and retrieved the cat food from the cabinet under the sink. When he turned around, Meg had removed her jeans and top and was standing there in nothing but the panties he’d glimpsed earlier, which he could see now were only a tiny triangle of purple lace suspended from thin elastic straps, and a bra made from the same lace, cupping her breasts lightly but letting soft flesh spill over the top. He dropped the bag.

            “You act like you’ve never seen a girl before,” Meg laughed. She paused. “Wait, _have_ you? Are you a virgin, Clarence?”

            “My name is Castiel.”

            “I know. I like Clarence though. It fits you.”

            He didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m not,” he said.

            “Not what?”

            “I’m not…” he couldn’t bring himself to say the word, not when she was standing in front of him like that, mostly undressed. “There was a girl, senior year. It… wasn’t a very good experience. But it happened.” He didn’t feel like telling her the whole story. It happened. That was what mattered. It still counted.

            He left the cat food on the floor, too embarrassed to call attention to it, and instead opened his drawer to find something for Meg to put on. He knew all of his clothes would be much too big, but at least they’d be clean. Pulling out a shirt to hand her, he turned around without looking at her face. It was too much for him right now. He hoped that he’d recover as the moment passed. Meg, however, still hadn’t dropped the subject. “She didn’t do it for you, huh?” she said in a teasing voice. “Maybe you got the wrong one. Or maybe she didn’t know what she was doing.”

            “That part was okay,” he said. “Can we talk about something else now?”

            Meg took the shirt from Cas and draped it over a nearby chair. “Fuck, this stuff’s wet too,” she said, running her hand over the underwear she was still wearing. “This shirt’s big enough, I bet they won’t notice.” She reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, letting it fall to the floor. Cas’s eyes fluttered involuntarily, and he looked away, looked anywhere but at her. She moved closer to him, letting her body brush against him, her hair falling across his arm. It smelled like strawberries. “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” she said. “Whoever that girl was, whatever she did… we’re not all like that.”

            “Is this what you do?” Cas said, still staring at the floor. “Whenever you like someone?”

            Meg stepped back as if she’d been slapped. “Fuck you!” she shouted. She grabbed his shirt from the chair, wadded it up and threw it back at him. “Keep your fucking shirt, I don’t want it anymore.” She marched toward the door.

            “Meg,” Cas said.

            “What?” she snapped.

            “You can’t go outside like that.” She looked down at herself, wearing only the purple lace panties, and slumped against the door, swiping at her eyes. Cas ducked his head and peered at her. “Are you crying?”

            “That was an asshole thing to say,” she said, sniffling. The black of her eyeliner had smudged, leaving dark rings around her eyes that, oddly, weren’t unattractive.

            “I didn’t mean anything bad by it,” Cas said. This must be another of those times, those accidentally-rude times. He didn’t know how to fix it, except to try telling the truth. “I’m not used to this.”

            “To what?” Meg sniffed. “People liking you?”

            Cas looked down. “No.”

            “Oh.” Something in her posture changed. She picked up the shirt from the floor, tried to dust some of the wrinkles out of it. “Look, I’m putting it on, okay? Thank you. Really.” She shrugged into the shirt, which fell to her knees, the sleeves lapping several inches over her hands. She didn’t bother buttoning it.

            “I’m sorry,” Cas said.

            “You shouldn’t be,” Meg said, pushing her hair back, letting the waves settle into slightly messier patterns around her shoulders. “It’s like you said outside. You’re… you. There’s nothing wrong with that.” She had moved closer again, and Cas felt like maybe he should hug her. Hugging wasn’t something he did often, and he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. He extended his arms so that they hooked slightly under hers and leaned forward. She laughed and grabbed him around the waist, pressing his body to hers. He expected it to bother him, as it often did, but with her, it felt okay. In fact, as he became more aware of the feeling of her body, still draped only in an open shirt, he was horrified to feel the beginnings of an erection and angled his waist away from her to hide his excitement. “It’s okay,” she whispered, and he knew she’d noticed. “I like thinking maybe some part of you likes me too.”

            “I think maybe more than one part of me likes you,” he said. “But I have to go back to work. And you, you have to go…”

            “I know.” She sighed. Pulling away from him, she buttoned the shirt and rolled up the sleeves. He found a pair of shorts that he wore for running, which almost looked like regular pants on her, like those short pants some of the girls wore – capris. She tucked the shirt into the waist as best she could. “Well, at least it’s clean,” she said. “Thanks.”

            He drove her to the laundromat before going back to the store. As he leaned across her to open her door, she suddenly pressed into him and kissed him. Her lips were soft and warm, her tongue darting between his like a tiny slick fish. It tickled a bit, and he kind of liked it. He concentrated on mimicking her motions, letting his tongue find hers, pushing back. Finally she broke their contact and put her hand on the door handle. “There’s probably gonna be another party this weekend,” she said. “Promise me you’ll at least think about coming?”

            “I promise,” Cas said.

Meg reached into her purse and pulled out a black Sharpie pen, grabbing Cas’s arm and pulling it close. She wrote a number on his skin with it. “Call me.”

“I will.”

She climbed out of the car, and, with one long, smiling glance behind her, walked into the laundromat and was gone.

Cas drove back to the Gas-N-Sip and unlocked the door, taking down the plastic clock. There was no one waiting outside, and the store itself was undisturbed. In the time he was gone, everything had remained exactly as he’d left it. Yet he couldn’t help feeling, as he returned to his task of stocking the shelves, that something profound had changed.


	3. Chapter 3

            Cas had the next day off, and ordinarily he’d have spent it driving around by himself exploring or curled up in his apartment with a book, but the last few days were heavy on his mind and he felt like he needed to talk about it. He called his best friend, Dean, and asked if he could come over.

            Like everyone else he knew in this town, Cas had met Dean in high school. He’d been a transfer student, good looking and charismatic, the kind of kid who usually would ignore Cas unless he was going to bother with bullying him. But to Cas’s surprise, Dean was actually nice to him. He stood up for him to the kids who picked on him, the same way he did for his own little brother. Cas never understood why, but he was grateful for it.

            “Sure,” Dean said over the phone, “but Eileen’s here with Sam, do you mind if they’re around?”

            Cas smiled. He appreciated how his friend knew he sometimes couldn’t tolerate being around too many people. But he considered Dean’s brother and his girlfriend to be his friends too. In fact, Sam had met Eileen because of him. She was in mainstream classes most of the time but came to Cas’s class a few times a week for speech therapy. She was nice to him, too, and because she watched his lips when he talked, she never minded that he didn’t like making eye contact. He’d invited her along one time when he went to hang out with Dean; she’d met Sam then, and they’d been inseparable ever since.

            “I don’t mind,” Cas said, smiling slightly against the receiver.

            “Good. Come on over then.”

            Cas climbed into his car and drove over to Dean’s basement apartment near the bus depot. It was always kind of dark and gloomy there, with only a small, high window that Dean had thrown a flannel blanket over because he couldn’t be bothered with buying curtains. Still, something about the subterranean room with its jumbled furniture and Dean’s classic rock music perpetually playing on the stereo was comforting to Cas in a way he couldn’t explain.

            He entered to find Dean on one end of his old plaid couch, a game controller in his hand. The music on the game had been turned down so that the Mario brothers were racing around to Led Zeppelin. Sam, on the other side of the couch, was holding the other controller, but he was losing badly – maybe because Eileen was sitting on his lap and distracting him by tickling his leg with her feet. “Sam, would you either get a room or play the damn game?” Dean demanded as Sam jolted with laughter while his character ran off a cliff.

            Eileen signed something to Sam, who laughed even harder. Dean stared at him. “She says you’re just jealous because that controller’s the only curves your hands have been on lately,” Sam said.

            Eileen cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. “If I wanted him to know what I said, I would have said it out loud,” she huffed, but she was smiling.

            Still standing in the doorway, Cas felt oddly as if he were intruding on something unless he made his presence known, so he loudly said “Hello.”

            Everyone on the couch looked up. Dean hit the pause button on his controller and tossed it aside. “Cas!” he said. “Come. Join us. My brother’s just playing the suicide version of this game anyway.”

            Cas crossed the room and claimed the center cushion of the enormous couch. For as ugly as the thing was, he never stopped being surprised by how comfortable it could be.

            “What’s up?” Dean asked Cas once he was settled between them.

            “Well,” Cas said, “I got invited to a party this weekend. I’m thinking of going.”

            “You, Cas?” Sam looked incredulous.

            “Are you surprised someone would invite me?”

            “No, not at all… you just don’t seem like the party type.”

            Eileen shut him up with a look. “Who invited you, Cas?” she asked.

            “A girl I met. She went to school with us, but I don’t remember her.” He shifted his weight and glanced around at everyone. “Did any of you know Meg Masters?”

            Sam and Eileen both shrugged and shook their heads, while Dean nearly spit out his drink.

            “Do you have some sort of history with her?”

            “You could say that.” Dean coughed, recovering. “She, uh, she kissed me. Freshman year. We were at a party, she was drunk. I don’t think it meant anything to her.” He took another drink of his soda and swallowed this one down, not looking at Cas. “I kind of get the impression she did that kind of thing a lot, though.”

            Cas thought back to the car, to the feeling of Meg’s lips on his. He’d liked it. A lot. She certainly seemed to know what she was doing. His face felt hot. He touched a hand to his cheek, wondering if it showed.

            Dean looked apologetic. “Man, I’m not trying to upset you or anything,” he said. “If you like her, go for it. High school was a long time ago. People change.”

            “Except in this town,” Sam said. “Where high school never ends.”

            Cas thought about it. He didn’t really mind if Meg had kissed a lot of other people; he just wanted it to mean something that she’d kissed _him._

            “I think you should go if you want to go, Cas,” Eileen said. “Don’t let what people say stop you.”

            “I might go,” Cas said. “I want to go. But…I’m scared.”

            “I get that,” Dean said. “It’s okay to be scared. But we’re here, right?” He looked over at Sam and Eileen, who both nodded. “If anything goes sideways for you, you can call any one of us in a heartbeat.”

            “Thank you,” said Cas. He gave Dean a half-hug from the side, the way that felt most comfortable to him. After all this time, Dean never tried to force him to do more than that, unlike the other people who were always pulling him too close, holding him so tightly he panicked. Cas knew he was lucky to have found friends who understood how he was and didn’t expect him to change. It made him feel safer about the idea of going to the party.

            When he left the apartment, Cas drove home and fed his cat, then stripped down to climb into the shower. Once his clothes were off, he noticed Meg’s number still written on his arm. Without bothering to put his clothes back on, Cas walked into the main room, picked up the phone, and dialed the number.

            “Hello?” the voice on the other end didn’t sound like Meg’s, but Cas wasn’t sure if that was just because people sounded different on the phone sometimes. Once he’d heard a recording of his own voice on his mother’s answering machine at her house, and freaked out because it sounded nothing like the way his voice sounded to his own ears and he didn’t know what to do with that. “Meg?” he asked.

            “No, this is Ruby.” The voice sounded bored, or annoyed – maybe both. She didn’t offer any further information.

            “Um… is Meg there?”

            Cas heard the receiver thunk down onto some kind of hard surface, and the same voice, more distorted and faraway-sounding, yell, “MEG! TELEPHONE!” There was a pause, then the voice yelled “I don’t know, some guy! How would I know? Get your ass over here and find out!”

There was another slamming sound, then a shuffling, then a sound like the receiver being lifted again. “Hello?” This voice was definitely Meg’s. Cas was comforted by how much it actually sounded like the way she sounded in person.

“Meg?”

“Yeah?”

“Um… it’s Cas.”

“Cas!” she sounded genuinely excited. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually call me.”

“You told me to.”

“That doesn’t mean you’ll actually do it. A lot of people wouldn’t. But then, you’re not like a lot of people, huh?”

“I guess I’m not.”

“So are you calling to tell me you’re coming this weekend?” Was she… did she sound… _hopeful_? Cas wished he were better at reading people’s voices. Dean’s words still hung in the back of his mind, attached to an image he wished he could shake of Meg kissing Dean. He shouldn’t get his hopes up, he shouldn’t assume he meant anything in particular to her. Yet, something in the way she was talking to him made him feel like maybe it actually mattered to her if he came or not.

“I’m telling you I am strongly inclined toward that option,” he said.

“Is there anything I can do to convince you?” Meg’s voice took on that slippery, honeyed quality he’d heard when she flirted with him before. He hadn’t been overly concerned with his nakedness up to that point, but now with his skin reacting to her voice he was acutely aware of it, and it somehow made him feel exposed to her, as if she could see his state and what effect she was having on him through the telephone wires.

“Um…” Cas bit his lip.

Meg laughed into the phone. “Listen, I promise, it won’t be bad. If you hate it, you can leave. No hard feelings. Hey,” she paused, and he heard her breathe, slightly deeper, as if she were thinking about something. “Maybe I could even leave with you. You know, if you couldn’t stay.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I’ll come.”

Meg squealed. She actually _squealed._ “Oh, I’m so excited! Yes!” she said. “I’m gonna hang up now, before you can change your mind.”

“I –” Cas started to say, but true to Meg’s word, the line had gone dead.

He stepped into the shower and let the hot water rush over his body, taut and stimulated, energy moving under his skin in tiny waves he swore he could see and feel. Under the stream, he let his right hand touch himself lightly, stroking over his hardness as he replayed the sound of her voice in his head, remembered the taste of her kiss. He wouldn’t let himself bring himself to climax, though – it felt wrong somehow. He didn’t have her permission for that. He turned the water colder and let shock bring his body back to its resting state instead of release. He felt a twinge of disappointment, but reminded himself he’d see her soon enough. Maybe then he’d know if it was all right.

The whole time he was washing, he kept his other arm extended out through the plastic shower curtain, dry and untouched. He kept her number intact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I freely admit that this chapter mostly served to indulge my Samleen (or is it Saileen?) fantasies, and I make no apologies for that.
> 
> Also, I swear I wrote the part about Super Mario Bros. before I saw 11 x 17.


	4. Chapter 4

On the night of Meg’s party, Cas hurried through his end-of-shift chores at work so he could lock up early. He wanted to have time to get ready. He showered and shaved, even though he already had done both that morning, and paid extra attention to the way that he slicked his hair. Looking through his closet, he realized he didn’t have any particularly nice or fashionable clothes, so he decided simple was best and chose a plain white button-down shirt and jeans. It was a little cold out, so he put on his overcoat, too. He drove the same way he had last time, already having committed it to memory. When he pulled up to Meg’s trailer, he saw that a half-dozen cars, mostly beaters and relics like his, were scattered across the dirt lawn already. Cas parked further back towards the road, the butt end of his car nearly touching the trees at the edge of their lot. He wanted to be sure that no one could block him in.

            He closed the car door and walked up the yard, seriously considering turning around and leaving, when the trailer door banged open and Meg came running down the steps. “Cas!”

            Cas swallowed. “Meg.” She looked different than he’d ever seen her before. She still had thick dark eyeliner around her eyes, but it seemed like she’d done something to her eyelashes too, and she was wearing a dark, plum-colored lipstick that made her lips look full and velvety and made it hard for Cas to stop staring at them, which he was beginning to fear could be a problem. Instead of her usual complicated tangle of tights and belts and buckles, industrial-looking jewelry and layers of dark fabric, she was wearing only a gauzy black babydoll dress with spaghetti straps, a black choker with a rose charm around her neck. She still wore her heavy black boots, but her legs above them were bare.

            She leaned close to Cas, touching his arm and saying, in a husky whisper aimed directly into his ear, “I’m glad you came.” Cas, afraid of getting too excited again, angled his body away from hers. Meg stepped back, a look of concern flashing across her face. “Is it okay, to touch you like this?” she asked, lifting her hand from his arm.

            “It is when you do it,” Cas answered, truthfully. Being touched was an iffy thing for him, but so far he’d never minded Meg’s touches.

            Smiling, Meg let her fingers trail back down to Cas’s arm and touched his elbow, guiding him toward the steps. “Come on, come in,” she said. He followed her up the steps and into the trailer. The door opened into a cramped kitchen, where the counters were lined with open beer and soda bottles and smaller bottles that seemed to contain something stronger; kids Cas recognized from school and a few he didn’t sprawled around, talking and laughing loudly over the jarring music playing. He felt a little uncomfortable already but he was determined not to show it. “Me and Ruby’s room is in the back,” Meg said, pointing down a narrow hallway. “You can put your coat in there.”

            Cas didn’t really understand why he needed to take his coat off at all, but since Meg had told him to he wanted to do it. He walked down the hall and opened the door to a room that held two beds, both of them heaped with coats and bags, and a crib. Cas startled at the sight of the crib and peered inside, where a blonde toddler slept.

            “Who’s the baby?” he asked Meg when he found his way back into the kitchen. “Another sister?”

            Meg laughed. “No, that’s Lilith. Ruby’s daughter.”

            “Ruby has a daughter?” Cas could feel his eyes widen. “I didn’t think she was old enough.”

            “Hell, Cas, if you can drop an egg, you’re old enough.” Cas stared at her, unsure of how dropping eggs correlated with bearing children. A baby could do that. It seemed to him that the ability to _not_ drop them would be more indicative of maturity. “She got pregnant senior year,” Meg went on. “By that asshole Lucifer, who dumped her as soon as he found out. She’s actually a pretty good mom, though, for being such an airhead.” Cas nodded. He could see Ruby in the kitchen, barefoot in a halter top and those tiny shorts, sitting on the counter and swinging her legs as she laughed with a group of guys standing around her. The idea of someone like her being someone’s mother was strange to him. But he believed Meg if she said she was good at it.

            As he was thinking this, the door banged open. “Hey there, Demon Girl!” yelled a sneering voice.

            Meg spun around. “The fuck are you doing here?” she demanded. Standing in the doorway were the same guys who’d thrown the swamp water on her in the Gas-N-Sip parking lot, that day that now seemed like it had been years earlier.

            The taller of the two smirked at her and held his arms open. “Hey, ask your skank of a sister, she’s the one who invited me.”

            Meg flew at him, her tiny form launching into the air with fists swinging. “Nobody talks about my sister like that but me, asshole!” A fist connected with his cheek, another with his shoulder. He moved to swing back, but Meg’s boot swept into his shin and his leg buckled. He tumbled backward, through the flimsy door and down the steps onto his back in the dirt, Meg landing on top of him, still swinging.

Ruby came through the door and ran down the steps, grabbing Meg by the shoulders. “Meg!” she was yelling. “Meg, stop it!”

Meg, straddling the guy’s waist, was still punching and kicking despite her sister’s efforts to pull her off. “Did you hear what he said about you?” she yelled. “Fuck! Why do you keep letting trash like this back into your life?”

Ruby turned her head like she’d been slapped. Gathering herself, she circled her arms around Meg’s waist and dragged her, still flailing, backward. “Do you want to wake up Lilith? Do you want the cops called up here again? Stop! Just stop!” The two of them landed in the dirt and Meg finally stopped moving. Lying there, a dark heap on the dirt, her hair pulling loose from its style and falling into her smudged face, Meg panted for breath. The guy she’d been beating on rolled over, touching a hand to his busted lip, and spit blood into the dirt. Brushing off her shorts, Ruby stood up. “Damn it, Meg, I can’t keep cleaning up your messes forever!” she said. “I _have_ a kid. I can’t keep trying to be your mother too.” She stomped back up the steps into the trailer as the guy stood up, shook himself loose, and walked back to his car to leave, his friend trailing behind.

Cas stared down at Meg as she rolled over and propped herself on her hands. The way her makeup had smudged on her face, her hair messed and her dress ripped, didn’t make her any less beautiful, but he felt somehow guilty for thinking so. He wanted to offer her some kind of comfort, but wasn’t exactly sure how.

Meg lifted herself from the dirt and sat down on the trailer steps. Cas edged slowly over to her and, when she didn’t object, sat down beside her. “Who was that?” he asked.

Meg swiped at her eye, dragging a line of black further out from the corner. “Fucking Dick Roman,” she said. “A guy who really lives up to his name, you know? Him and his little crony Edgar. Ruby dated him for awhile before she got tangled up with Lucifer, and now he’s always trying to sweet-talk her just long enough to get what he wants and fuck her over again.” She leaned her head back and sighed. “It’s like she doesn’t even get it, you know? Our mom died when we were little. I don’t even remember her. I think Ruby barely does. And she’s always acted like it was her job to take care of me. But I mean, I’m only two years younger, and I’m a big girl now. I’m trying to look out for _her_ , and she still just sees me as her kid sister who doesn’t know anything.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas said, wishing he could think of something more helpful.

“Don’t be. You help more than you know.” She looked over at him. “Can we go somewhere?” she said. “I mean, even if we just go sit in your car or something. I kind of want to be away from everyone.”

“I suppose I could let you in,” Cas said, even though he felt a little anxious about the idea of being alone at the party while Meg sat in the car.

She stared at him. “I meant away from everybody but _you_ ,” she said slowly. “I want to be with just you. Can we, please?”

Cas nodded. They walked to the car and he unlocked the driver’s door. He was about to climb in behind the wheel when Meg reached behind him and unlocked the door to the back seat. Cas gave her a long, puzzled look as she opened the back door and slid across the seat, patting the space beside her. Cas shrugged, closed the driver’s door and climbed in next to Meg.

He took his own seat, next to the window opposite hers, but with one of her slight laughs she scooted along the bench seat into the middle, until their thighs were touching. Cas felt a strange sensation from the pressure of her skin against his, an electric hum that shouldn’t have come from such simple contact. “Why?” he asked, looking down at her as she curled against him.

“Why what?”

“You said you like me. Why? Why me?”

Meg breathed deeply, nestled her head on his shoulder and insinuated herself up under his arm by pushing until it had no choice but to give, settling again draped over her shoulders. The best word Cas could think of was _catlike_ , like how his cat would nudge her way under his hand, forcing him to pet her. Meg’s small sleek body moved with the same kind of motions, and, it seemed, the same intent. Lightly, tentatively, he stroked her arm, and she gave a little sigh that sounded pleased.

“You’re not like other guys,” she said. “Not like any I’ve met. I mean, you’ve got guys like Dick and Edgar, who were popular in high school and that’s as big as they’re ever gonna get, but they don’t know it yet, so they still go around being mean to everyone like it’s gonna make people like them more. And you have guys like Lucifer, who might literally be the devil.” She shuddered under his arm. “I mean, he’s so charming. Everybody likes him. I even did, at first. But under the surface, he’s just so cold. Like he’s got no soul. But you,” she looked up at him, “you don’t even seem to know how to play games, screw with people like that. Like all of them do.”

“I don’t,” Cas said. His body tensed. He wasn’t quite sure she wasn’t insulting him.

Like everything, Meg seemed to pick up on it. Cas didn’t understand how she could seem to know so many of his thoughts without him saying any of them out loud. “You’re better than them,” she said. “You’re real. I like you this way.”

“I don’t know how to be any other way.”

“I know.” Cas heard the sound of something banging and a shriek of laughter surfing over the top of the loud music still pouring out of the trailer. He had the thought that he’d parked so far away specifically to give himself an escape route; that he’d expected to be overwhelmed and need to leave. Instead, it was Meg who’d wanted to get away. As he was lost in this thought, Meg leaned up and kissed him.

Her kisses started soft and sweet, but quickly grew more insistent. He followed her lead, but it all happened so fast. One moment she was still burrowed under his arm, the next he was flat on his back on the seat and she was straddling his waist not unlike how she’d straddled Dick’s in the yard not long before, but there was no violence in her movements now. She rolled her hips against his, and he was completely hard in his pants and saw no point in trying to hide it anymore. If Meg noticed, as he was sure she must, she didn’t say anything, so she must not have minded terribly. Her thighs wrapped around his waist, plush and warm, she rolled with him so they were lying side-by-side, facing each other, and yanked the hem of his shirt out of his pants.

Dropping little kisses down his chest as she went, she unbuttoned his shirt. “Cas,” she breathed. “Cas, is this okay?”

Cas himself was breathing so hard he didn’t think he could answer in words, so he simply nodded as emphatically as he could. Meg’s hands slipped into his open shirt and swam over his back, fingernails scratching him lightly in a way that only made him more excited. His eyes on hers, focused in that way that only rarely didn’t make him uncomfortable, he slid a hand slowly up her thigh, looking for an answer in her face to a question he couldn’t seem to ask. She bit her lip and nodded, and he reached under her dress. He was surprised to find the insides of her thighs already slick, the flimsy fabric of her panties so damp they seemed useless. She let out a noise somewhere between a whine and a moan as he touched her there, high-pitched and careless. She lifted her hips, hooking her hands through the narrow ribbons of elastic at the sides of her panties and pulling them off. “ _Please_ ,” she murmured, taking his hand and guiding it back to where it had been. Now Cas felt only silky wetness and the velvety folds of her.

“Do you want me, Cas?” Meg asked. It wasn’t a plea, and there was no playfulness in her voice. She was asking him, directly, her voice steadier than he’d heard it since they’d come to the car. The matter-of-factness of the offer grounded Cas, and he found his voice.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

Meg seemingly lost any ability she’d had to stay calm after that. She arched up into his body, pressing her lips to his as if she were trying to devour him while her hands tore at his belt buckle. She shoved his pants down and pulled him out hard, slicking a bead of moisture over the head of his cock before stroking down the length of it. Cas couldn’t contain the feeling in his chest. He wondered for a moment if he was going to die. “Wait,” Meg said. She rolled to the side and shrugged off a tiny black leather purse that Cas hadn’t even noticed she was wearing. She rifled through it, shuffling around makeup and gum wrappers, until she pulled out a condom wrapped in foil. “I don’t want you to think I planned this or anything,” she said with a sheepish shrug. “After what happened to Ruby, my dad makes me carry them everywhere I go.”

Cas honestly didn’t care why she had it, only what it meant. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she tore open the foil with her teeth, spitting the chewed-off corner to the side, and rolled the condom onto him, stroking slightly as she did. She lay back, pulling him with her. “Come here.”

Cas let Meg drag his body down on top of hers as he braced a hand under the small of her back and pushed inside her. Meg cried out softly and bit his shoulder, and with his free hand he stroked her hair, his nerves jangling from the sensation of her teeth on him.

They were sweat and heat, moving together, her nails dragging faintly down his back as he slid in and out of her. Meg gasped, her body suddenly bearing down on him. “Oh,” she said, as if she were surprised. “Oh, God, Cas!”

The tightening of her muscles around him had started a tingling feeling spreading through his ass and thighs, but it was the sound of her saying his name that pushed him over the edge. With a last deep thrust, he felt everything spilling out of him, emptying as he collapsed against her shoulder. When he could find the strength to move again, he rolled off her and pulled her to rest on his chest. “You are full of surprises, aren’t you?” Meg asked, trailing a finger down his bare skin there.

“What about that surprised you?”

She laughed. “You seem so innocent, but you’re sure not, are you?”

“I suppose not,” he said. He sighed, burying his head in her hair. “I don’t really want this to end.”

“Then take me home with you.” He had already let her as much into his space as he’d ever let anyone; he wasn’t sure how much he could take. But it was her, and some part of him felt okay with it. Some part of him even wanted it, desperately, with a kind of desire he didn’t have a name for. “Please?”

“Okay,” he said, and they pulled themselves together as much as possible and climbed into the front seat. Cas cranked the ignition and backed out through the escape path he’d left for himself, leaving the lights of the party fading in the rear view.


	5. Chapter 5

            Cas woke up to Meg in his bed, her body stretched out to its full length, still not very long, but leonine and golden against his sheets. Her dark hair spilled across her pillow and bled over onto his, and he liked this encroachment, even though their skin was no longer touching. Both of their clothes lay in twin heaps on the floor. Cas normally folded his and put them away after wearing, unless they were dirty enough to need the hamper, but Meg had shrugged out of hers like a snake shedding skin and it didn’t make sense not to do the same, since there would be a mess in the morning anyway.

They’d climbed together into the sheets, their skin fully bare, but they hadn’t done anything else that night but hold each other. She’d curved her small body around the jut of his hip and rested her head on his chest, and he’d allowed it, marveling in sleepy satisfaction at the scent and the warmth of her. Now she was lying beside him as he woke up and he could still smell her hair and he couldn’t imagine anything making him happier. As he thought it, Meg moved with a sleepy content sound, eyes fluttering open as she stretched up to kiss him. “Morning, handsome,” she said, smiling with her lips still almost touching his.

Cas smiled too. “Good morning.”

Meg snuggled against him, settling her head on his shoulder. “Do you have to work today?”

“Yes, but not until two o’clock. I’m scheduled for the swing shift today.”

“Good. That means I get you for a little longer.” She nipped his shoulder. He startled at the slight rush of pain, followed by a twinge of that feeling her teeth had given him the night before, and sucked in his breath involuntarily. “I work at three, but it’s in the neighborhood. I could ride over with you and hang out until my shift starts.”

There was something about the way Meg made plans for them that still made Cas nervous, the way they disrupted his routine, pried control out of his grasp. But he was loving every minute he spent with her, and honestly he didn’t want it to end any sooner than it had to.

“So,” Meg said, stroking his arm lightly, “Who do I have to thank for last night, anyway?”

Cas wrinkled his brow, looking down at her. She hadn’t been with anyone but him since they’d first seen each other back at her house. “Me, I guess.”

Meg laughed. “I love it. You don’t even know how adorable you’re being.”

“I am?”

“You are, and I love it.” She shifted so he was facing him on the pillow. “I meant, you know, you said there was somebody before. I was just curious. You clearly knew what you were doing.”

“Somebody before…oh.” Cas suddenly realized what she meant. He breathed deeply. “Her name was April,” he said. “Senior year. We dated for a few weeks…I mean. I guess.”

Meg wrinkled her nose. “April _Kelly_?” she said. “That stuck-up bitch? Why would you ever date _her_?”

Cas looked away. “It was her idea,” he said. “Or at least, I thought it was. That’s what she said. After…well, when it was over, she told me it was a dare. Some of the guys she hung out with thought it would be funny.”

“Cas.” Meg’s voice was surprisingly soft. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her face, but he turned in her direction. “Cas, there’s nothing funny about that. Listen to me. She didn’t deserve you.” Cas lifted his eyes to her and was surprised to see _her_ turn away, punching the mattress. He jumped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It just…it makes me so mad. You – this great guy, this incredibly sweet guy – and she would just use you like that.”

“I mean,” Cas stammered. “I’m not even sure I really liked her that way. Or at all. I’d never actually given any thought to it. But then she approached me, and…” he raked a hand back through his hair, a motion that calmed him. “It seemed easy,” he confessed. “Other people made it look easy, finding someone who liked you. I wanted to know what that felt like.”

Meg leaned over and planted a kiss on Cas’s collarbone. “Well, I told you before, _I_ like you,” she said. “I like you a lot. And if you’ll let me, I’ll show you exactly how that feels.”

“I would imagine it – oh.” Cas gasped as she kissed across his chest, flicking her tongue over his nipple and biting quickly just below it. She slid over the mattress and over him until her body was on his again, her leg twined between his. He liked the feeling of her weight on him. When she hit another spot that sent a rush of sparks up his spine, he grabbed her shoulders involuntarily.

Meg looked up at him, her hair falling in front of her face like a shiny dark curtain. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked.

Cas shook his head, pressed hard into the pillow. “No. Please don’t.”

Meg slid down his body, dropping kisses on his skin as she went. When she reached his thighs he tensed, and she asked him again if it was okay. “Yes,” he said in a strangled voice. “But – ”

Moving her lips slowly inward, Meg stopped as if suddenly realizing something. “Wait,” she said slowly. “Has nobody ever done this to you before?”

Cas wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing, though he had some ideas. He bit his lip and shook his head. To his surprise, Meg smiled. “I get to corrupt the angel after all!” she crowed gleefully.

“I’m not an angel.”

“Stop pouting, I don’t mean it as an insult.” The way she laughed, as if everything was a joke but he was in on it too, made it impossible for Cas not to smile. Raising an eyebrow mischievously, she dipped her head back down. While Cas grabbed the sheets, physically feeling his eyes widen, she pressed the tip of her tongue to the base of his cock and slowly licked a line up the underside of it. He forgot how to breathe at that point and didn’t remember again until she had reached the head and flattened her tongue to swirl around it, and even then it came out as a gasp.

She closed her lips around him, just the tip at first, playing with him with her lips and tongue before taking all of him into her mouth in a long smooth stroke. As she moved her mouth against him he felt sensations he couldn’t even process, to the point where he almost panicked because it was all too much, but all of it felt so amazing and he started to get lost in it. A wave of building tension hit him, stronger than anything he’d felt before, and pulled him back out of it. “Meg!” he cried out, alarmed, gripping her shoulder.

She giggled at first, her mouth still full of him, the hum of her laughter creating a vibration against his skin. She took her mouth off him just long enough to murmur, “It’s okay,” before going back to work on him. A few moments later he was coming, his body twisting and shuddering, his breath tangling into a low drawn-out groan as she swallowed the bursts he felt slightly embarrassed to be spilling into her mouth, showing no sign of embarrassment herself. When it was over, she wiped her mouth and slid back up the sheets to lie beside him, a grin plastered across her face.

When Cas finally found his breath enough to speak, he stammered, “Is that – is that what you do when you like someone?”

“Generally, yes.”

“I want to do that to you.”

Meg laughed. “I don’t really have the right equipment.”

Cas could feel his cheeks get hot, and he looked away. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I mean…I want to make you _feel_ like that.” He rolled over to face her again, and saw her lips part as if she were going to say something, then close again as if she were reconsidering. In that moment, he summoned up every bit of nerve he had to go with his instincts and pinned her to the mattress, shifting his weight on top of her and kissing her deeply. She kissed back, so, encouraged, he moved his kisses to her neck, then slowly downward.

“Cas!” she gasped in a half-laughing, half-surprised voice. “What are you doing?”

He pulled back. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Mmm, not even a little bit.” She reached up and curled her hands around his shoulders, pulling him back down to her, back into a kiss that burned through him. He moved to her neck again, then her shoulders, her collarbone, wanting to kiss and touch her everywhere. When he reached her breast he flattened his tongue the same way she had, swirling it over her nipple, trying out the feeling of it. She moaned and arched her back, so he did it again, then sucked her nipple into his mouth. She gasped sharply, crying his name. He kept his eyes on her face while he reached his hand across to the other one and rolled it lightly between his finger and thumb. As he did, she bucked backward and hissed “ _Fuck,”_ her own eyes squeezing shut. He hoped he was interpreting correctly that his actions were pleasing to her; as he thought to ask her, she gripped his wrist and shoved his hand down between her legs, moving his fingers through the impossible wetness there. “Feel what you’re doing,” she said.

An impulse struck him, desire mixed with almost scientific curiosity, and he decided not to fight it. Keeping his eyes focused on her, not flinching even as she looked back down at him, he brought his slick fingers to his mouth and licked them. Meg moaned again, even though he wasn’t touching her. “Fuck, Cas,” she repeated. Her taste was something thick and smoky, at once utterly foreign and strangely familiar, and he was slightly surprised that he liked it. He kept his eyes on her as he scooted down until his face was between her legs. He kissed her thighs, slick with that same smoky wetness, and she sighed, rolled her hips, and slung a leg over his shoulder. It felt like an invitation. He turned his head inward to the center of her, kissed her there. She murmured encouragement studded with curses, reaching down to play with his hair as he slowly opened his mouth and explored her with his tongue. There was more of that taste, thickening as he went. He knew when he’d found the right spot because she screamed “ _Yes!_ ” while twisting and pulling at his hair hard enough it was almost painful, yet somehow strangely enjoyable. She grabbed his wrist again and guided it back between her legs, twisting his fingers inside her and moving his hand in rhythm with his tongue’s sloppy motions. After a few strokes she let go and he kept going on his own. Repeating his name mixed with expletives and fading into unintelligible babble, she rose up, jerked back, and clamped her thighs so tightly around his neck that he worried for a moment she’d cut off his breath. Then she relaxed as if she’d gone boneless and fell back onto the pillows, pulling him off her by his hair.

He slid up the mattress and lay beside her. Her lips were swollen and reddened from her biting them; her cheeks were flushed and her pupils dilated. He’d never seen her look more beautiful. Never seen anyone. “Hello,” he said, resting his head on the pillow next to hers, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She laughed, rolling toward him and laying a hand on his cheek. “Hi,” she said.

One-thirty came too soon, and Cas reluctantly distentangled himself from Meg’s warm body and climbed out of bed to get dressed for work. Meg lifted her torn dress from the floor and made a face. “Why is it every time I come to your house, I end up without anything I can wear out of it?”

Cas rummaged through his drawers until he found another shirt and pants that could fit Meg in a pinch. “That is unfortunate,” he said, handing them to her. “Perhaps you don’t have very good luck with clothes.”

“Or maybe,” she said, sliding her arms around his waist, “it’s because it’s so much more fun here without them.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

She dressed and laced on her boots, then waited by the door as Cas fed the cat before letting them out of the apartment. Climbing into his car downstairs, Meg burst out laughing. “What is it?” Cas asked.

She pointed at the sign above the furniture store Cas lived over. “Sofa Kingdom?” she said. “They didn’t put much thought into that name, did they?” Cas squinted at her, confused. “Say it slow,” Meg said.

“So…fuh…king…dum,” Cas pronounced each syllable carefully. His eyes widened as the realization hit him. _So fucking dumb._ “I get it.”

And for a moment, they laughed together, sharing a joke. He couldn’t remember when that had happened before in his life. Maybe it never had.

Cas dropped Meg outside the laundromat and drove two blocks over to the Gas-N-Sip to start his shift. He kept busy, stocking cigarettes and mopping floors, but business was slow, and his mind was elsewhere. At eight, with no chores to do and not a customer in sight, Cas made a decision. He grabbed two slices of congealed pizza from the food warmer and set the hands on the clock in the door. Fifteen minutes. Nobody would miss him in that time.

He drove over to the laundromat with the pizza on the passenger seat. From the parking lot, he could see Meg through the plate-glass window, wearing an apron with pockets stuffed with detergent packets over his pants and shirt. She moved from machine to machine, fiddling with coin slots and emptying soap packets into reservoirs. The laundromat seemed relatively dead too, only a few sleepy-looking patrons waiting in corners for their washloads to finish. Cas killed the ignition and walked inside with the pizza slices.

The door had a bell that rang when it opened, and Meg looked up as soon as he walked in. “Cas!”

He held out the slices. “I brought us dinner,” he said.

They sat on top of the dryers to eat, feeling them rumble under their legs. Meg draped one of her legs between Cas’s, a gesture that felt intimate to him in way that was somehow comforting. It occurred to Cas that this was the closest thing to a real date they'd had. When they finished, they shared a long kiss before tossing the empty wrappers into the trash can. Cas drove back to work feeling like he was floating, a feeling that carried him through the rest of his shift.

When he locked up and came back outside, Meg was sitting on the hood of his car. She didn’t have to ask him to take her home with him this time.


End file.
